FOOTAGE of John Lennon smoking pot, writing songs and discussing putting the hallucinogenic drug LSD in former U.S. President Richard Nixon's tea is the focus of a court case starting in Boston next week over whether the video should be made public.

The case pits Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, against Lawrence, Massachusetts-based World Wide Video, which claims ownership of nine hours of raw footage of the former Beatle and Ono that was filmed just weeks before the "Fab Four" broke up in 1970.

World Wide, a New England consortium of Beatles collectors, wants to release the black-and-white footage as a two-hour film titled "3 days in the life" about Lennon during a pivotal and turbulent time for the most celebrated band of the 1960s.

The company, which paid more than US$1 million for the footage after legal costs and other expenses, nearly premiered it last year at the private Berwick Academy in Maine but abruptly scrapped the screening after the school received a stop order from Ono's lawyers, who assert copyright ownership of the videotapes.

World Wide has filed a suit in U.S. District Court in Boston against Ono for copyright infringement. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for April 30.

According to court documents, World Wide said it bought 24 original videotapes and their copyrights in 2000 from Anthony Cox, Ono's husband before her marriage to Lennon in 1969.

Cox shot the footage at Lennon's estate in England for a documentary he planned titled "Portrait."

The footage, recorded from Feb. 8 to 11, 1970, shows Lennon composing two hits, "Remember" and "Mind Games."

The original videotapes are now held by Ono, whose lawyers claim in a countersuit that she purchased them legally from World Wide through a Florida man, who has been named as a defendant in the Massachusetts company's suit.

(SD-Agencies)